Authenticity,authority,and accountability in music education

Abstract

Music education researchers have produced a large body of literature arguing that music education programs should adapt their practices to respect and incorporate the multiculturally diverse range of musical backgrounds and ancestral musical traditions as they exist in the world and among the students we teach. Based on an examination of the music-focused non-governmental organization, Ethno World, this article problematizes issues of “multiculturalism” in music learning and teaching by contrasting the moral reasoning of formal (i.e., state-governed) instruction and non-formal (i.e., through non-governmental organizations) learning. Specifically, this article examines issues of accountability, authenticity, and teacher authority in multicultural music education, arguing that an obsession with original-copy conceptions of music teaching and demands for teachers to be “highly qualified” may deprive students of deeper learnings into what “getting it right” might mean.

Teaching is inherently political. In a music learning and teaching context, this becomes obvious when comparing musical traditions with relatively few practitioners, such as Inuit throat singing, with musical traditions with considerably more, such as Western classical music. It is in this spirit that Kallio (2021) argues that all music teaching and learning participates in a moral ecology: “[the complex and dynamic] broader historical and sociocultural operations of power that make certain expressions and identities possible and silence others” (p. 3).

A monocultural approach to music teaching has been described as one that upholds the dominance of a single tradition, often Western classical, thereby marginalizing non-dominant musical practices (Elliott, 1990; Strand & Rinehimer, 2018). There are mounting concerns that monocultural approaches to music teaching are insufficient if not problematic in our increasingly diverse world (Campbell et al., 2016). Music education researchers have produced a large body of literature arguing that music education programs should adapt their practices to respect and incorporate the multiculturally diverse range of musical backgrounds and ancestral musical traditions as they exist in the world and among the students we teach (Abril & Gault, 2006; Anderson & Campbell, 1989; Campbell, 1991, 2004, 2018; Elliott, 1989; Legette, 2003; Quesada & Volk, 1997; Schippers, 2010; Shaw, 2012; Volk, 1998). These arguments, however, raise questions of expertise and teaching competence. What are the limits of teaching musical practices? Can any music teacher rightfully teach any musical practice—or are music teachers responsible to the fidelity, or authenticity, of musical practices?

Discourses of authenticity are well known in ethnomusicology (Solis, 2004), where it is widely understood that “no music is frozen in time” (Campbell et al., 2005, p. vi). Ethnomusicology, however, is a discipline largely founded on the premise of specialization. While musical practices may indeed evolve over time, there is still an expectation that those doing the teaching have an obligation to respect the core cultural values, norms, meanings, expectations, and practices of a given musical tradition. This is especially true in contexts where individuals function, implicitly or explicitly, as epistemic agents. That is, when teaching under the guise of authority, one is a participant in an epistemic system: “a social system that houses a variety of procedures, institutions, and patterns of interpersonal influence that affect the epistemic outcomes of its members” (Goldman, 2012, p. 224). This raises questions about who has the right to teach what and how—and, by extension, raises questions about the processes or safeguards that might (or should) exist to protect people against what might be considered incompetent or harmful teaching practices.

The moral ecology of music education is complicated by both the political will to incorporate diverse musics and the capacity (competence) of music educators to do so in an ethical manner. In this article, I utilize empirical research conducted as part of Ethno Research, a large-scale investigation of the music-focused non-governmental organization (NGO), Ethno World, to problematize issues of multiculturalism in music learning and teaching by contrasting the moral reasoning as it might occur under the auspices of formal (i.e., state-governed) instruction and non-formal (i.e., through NGOs) learning. While some extant research on music education and NGOs exists (e.g., Hentschke, 2013; Kallio & Partti, 2013; Schmidt, 2014; Shorner-Johnson, 2017), much of this research concerns NGOs as a replacement for or supplement to state-governed schooling. By contrast, the Ethno World program, a series of intercultural music exchange camps operated by the NGO, JM International (JMI), does not explicitly seek to replace or supplement school music programs. Its practices, however, raise important questions about authenticity, authority, and accountability. In seeking to inform ethical and philosophical issues not just in multicultural music education, but in music education generally, I ask, following Schmidt (2014), in what ways can the NGO practices of Ethno World provide alternative conceptualizations of multicultural music education?

I begin the paper with a contextual discussion of multicultural education and multicultural music education, considering how specialization may factor into expectations for authenticity in music teaching. I then discuss issues of authority and accountability, both generally and with respect to formal education, proceeding to examine ways that accountability has been considered in relation to the activities of NGOs. At this point, I turn my attention to the music-focused NGO, Ethno World. Drawing on my involvement with Ethno Research, I problematize and interrogate musical authority and responsibility, using empirical data from Ethno Research to support my arguments about the challenges school music teachers face in attempting to teach musical traditions outside their own. I conclude with suggestions for how the practices of Ethno World may provide insights into alternate conceptualizations of multicultural music education.

Multiculturalism and authenticity

Although interculturalism has become an increasingly common way of discussing diversity and pluralism in music education (e.g., Bartleet et al., 2020; Westerlund et al., 2020, 2022), multiculturalism has a longer history (e.g., Anderson & Campbell, 1989; Elliott, 1989; Jorgensen, 1998; Kang, 2016; Volk, 1998). I acknowledge fundamental differences between the concepts (Meer et al., 2016; Montalvo-Barbot, 2019; Taylor, 2012), but for the purposes of this article I use multiculturalism as a broad umbrella term encompassing both multiculturalism and interculturalism. The focus here is on how multiculturalism and its associated ideas have been used in the discourses of education and music education.

Histories of multiculturalism in the wider field of education exist elsewhere (e.g., Banks & Banks, 1995). Of note here is how multicultural education, especially as it arose in the United States, was driven by a movement that (1) recognized how globalization was leading to increasing diversity in many societies around the world (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 1995); (2) built upon the efforts of the UNESCO to promote peaceful intercultural relations (UNESCO, 2006); and (3) recognized how the worldview of curriculum and teaching practices too often reflect that of the dominant class and, as a result, disadvantage some students: in short, “the idea that all students—regardless of their ethnic, racial, cultural, or linguistic characteristics—should have an equal opportunity to learn in school” (Banks, 2009, p. 1).

As a movement, multicultural education is based on a set of beliefs related to the purposes of schooling. Drummond (2005), a music educator active in the early days of multicultural education, summarizes these beliefs as falling into one of three basic rationales: the removal of disadvantage, that curricular content should reflect our culturally plural world, and that “the majority can learn from the minority” (p. 2). Given the inseparability of music and culture, the emergence of multicultural music education was perhaps an inevitable response to multicultural education. According to Hebert and Karlsen (2010), multicultural music education describes both the teaching of diverse musics (i.e., musics beyond the Western art music tradition) and the teaching of music to students from diverse cultural backgrounds. This echoes the conclusion of Morton (2001), who observed that rationales for multicultural music education are generally based on two premises: (1) that school populations have become culturally diverse and (2) that music, as a cultural practice, is diverse and this should therefore be reflected in the curriculum.

Multicultural music education discourses sometimes gloss over the is–ought fallacy, thereby avoiding more direct engagement with normative rationales. Put differently: that the world has culturally diverse musical practices is not, in and of itself, a reason to teach any of them. Similarly, that classrooms consist of students from diverse cultural backgrounds is not, in and of itself, a reason to teach the musics of those particular backgrounds. From a formal education standpoint, the normative arguments for teaching musics beyond that of the dominant culture rest on the belief that learning culturally diverse musics will either help to reduce disadvantage (which assumes that disadvantage exists and that society should be guided by a commitment to equity) or ultimately benefit all students more than the alternative of a monocultural curriculum. Within these two normative positions there are different motivations at play. For some, teaching diverse musics helps to change attitudes, opinions, and beliefs, thereby breaking down cultural boundaries and making society more tolerant and equitable as a result (Ilari et al., 2013). For others, teaching diverse musics is the best way to promote and develop what Anderson and Campbell (2010) call “greater musical flexibility and polymusicality” (p. 3). Even if it has not always been enacted to the extent desired by many of its proponents (see, e.g., Legette, 2003), the principle of including diverse musics in the curriculum has become so commonplace that dissenting viewpoints are virtually non-existent. As Cain et al. (2013) confidently assert, “cultural diversity in music education has become both a reality and a necessity in the 21st century” (p. 79).

In this article, I am primarily concerned with how the desire to learn and teach diverse musics plays out in the practicalities of school music teachers trying to include musical practices “outside their [own] cultures of origin” (Campbell et al., 2005, p. vi). Arguably the leading voice in promoting the teaching of diverse musics is Campbell, who suggests that the desire to include diverse musics in the school music curriculum has appeared under a variety of labels over the years, such as “world music pedagogy,” “global music education,” and “cultural diversity in music education” (Campbell, 2004). While each label may hold implications for the teaching of diverse musics, the salient point here is that Campbell and others tend to focus less on the argument for inclusion (e.g., that a curriculum that includes a diversity of musics develops superior musicality to a monocultural curriculum) and more on providing practical resources and pedagogical ideas. Unsurprisingly, Campbell (and others) have looked to ethnomusicology which, as Hebert and Karlsen (2010) point out, provides multicultural music education with “specialized knowledge of the subject matter” (p. 7). ¹

The belief in specialized knowledge with respect to musics of the world raises a host of issues that revolve around what I characterize as “getting it right.” Although possible to challenge the premise of “right or wrong” as a foundation for instruction, it continues to define how learning is typically understood in formal contexts. At a base level, it is relatively easy to accept that getting it right means that, for example, two plus two equals four (right) and not five (wrong). When it comes to artistic and cultural practices, however, matters are less straightforward. Does getting it right mean performing a song’s pitches and rhythms correctly or does it involve understanding the context, significance, and meaningfulness of the song for the cultural group that created it? As Regelski (2010) points out, one cannot separate musics “from the social practices that occasion them” (p. 96). As he asserts, “outsiders cannot gain meaningful insights into a social group simply by ‘exposure’ to its musical practices” (p. 96).

The notion of “insiderness” and “outsiderness” with respect to artistic and cultural practices introduces what Hebert and Karlsen (2010) claim is the most frequently raised concern about teaching diverse musics: authenticity. The ability to judge rightness and wrongness of a cultural practice is believed to rest, at least to some degree, on possessing enough cultural insiderness to know what counts as right and what counts as wrong. For critics and skeptics of multicultural music education, the teaching of musics with which one is unfamiliar is either (1) undesirable or (2) too difficult (see Campbell, 2004). Following these concerns, it is better to avoid teaching diverse musics than risk being inauthentic to a cultural practice. Indeed, Marsh (2005) points out that, in some cases, teachers have been guilty of using “inappropriate examples of music taken out of context” (p. 38). She explains that, while published materials on teaching world musics provide a resource, there is also a danger that such materials can contribute “to the distancing of the teacher and cultural ‘other’ by emphasizing the differences between musical cultures [. . .] [placing] music firmly in a geographical context that is removed from the lives of teachers” (p. 39). As Hebert and Karlsen (2010) summarize with respect to multicultural music education, there is a fear that multicultural music education “will lead to more harm than good, particularly by reinforcing negative stereotypes” (p. 8).

For critics of multicultural music education, good teaching is largely defined by expertise and authenticity: music teachers are ethically obligated to teach according to what insiders deem “right.” Culture bearers typically provide the model that educators are expected to copy—a concept of teaching and learning that educational philosophers Thompson and Cook (2013) describe as the “model-copy obsession” that prioritizes sameness over difference, a phenomenon they trace to Plato and the simulacrum. For advocates of multicultural music education, the model-copy conception of authenticity is problematic on two fronts. First, it is an excuse for inaction, thereby maintaining the centrality of the Western art music tradition. This prevents students from broadening their musicality and awareness of other cultures. As Cain et al. (2013) emphatically state, “it is better to know a little than nothing. The first thing our students need to get is a sense of ‘what’s out there’” (p. 5). Second, and more importantly, the concept of authenticity is fraught with the misguided assumption that there is a correct and unchanging version of a given musical practice (see Schippers, 2010; Solis, 2004). It follows that if musics are not frozen in time, there is no original or ideal to copy. That musics are not frozen in time, however, is not to suggest that anything goes. Proponents of multicultural music education perspectives emphasize the importance of professional training and preparation, especially at the pre-service level but also at the in-service level. Teachers, suggest Campbell and Higgins (2015), should at some point train with or engage culture bearers as part of their ongoing development and commitment to getting it right. Embedded within this commitment are two major issues: (1) the connection between what is learned and how it is learned and (2) the ethical-functional role of the educator.

The what–how issue is a long-standing one in education that has appeared in various guises. Does authenticity refer only to the end result, or does it include the process by which musics are learned? Lave and Wenger (1991) critiqued the contrivance of school teaching and learning with their concept of legitimate peripheral participation, the process by which newcomers become old-timers. Scholars have questioned whether, for example, learning gamelan with notation rather than by ear changes what is learned (Perlman, 2004). Is a student still “getting it right” if they perform gamelan with sheet music? As Wiggins (2005) asks, “does the close relationship between a musical tradition and the way it is handed down form the basis of maintaining traditional formats of instruction?” (p. 13).

The role of the educator is an equally challenging issue with respect to authenticity and getting it right. To what extent are teachers authorized to intervene in the nature of what is learned? Is it better to use notation to teach Balinese gamelan if the alternative of not using notation would result in gamelan not being taught? Or to take a more extreme example, if a hypothetical musical practice was highly misogynistic, would it be ethical to maintain the misogyny under the banner of authenticity? To what or whom is a teacher ultimately responsible: the perceived authenticity of a given musical practice, or the norms and values of—for example—democracy, liberalism, equality, or any other core tenets of a society?

Authority and accountability

Teachers with a high degree of agency over curriculum—which in many instances throughout the world includes school music teachers (who tend to determine repertoire choices for their students)—act as epistemic agents (Timonen et al., 2021). As a result, music teachers have a moral responsibility in that they should be accountable for their actions to the extent they participate in the construction of worldviews for others. This raises questions about the limits of teacher authority, however. As Räsänen (2010) notes, it is unclear whether a teacher “is merely a transmitter or maintainer of the prevailing culture or also its interpreter, evaluator and transformer” (p. 15). Under whose authority might a teacher exercise influence to change the practice rather than sustaining values considered inappropriate to schooling or avoiding its inclusion in the curriculum altogether?

As a concept, authority has been classified into various categories: e.g., traditional, charismatic, legal-rational (sometimes referred to as bureaucratic), and professional (Pace & Hemmings, 2007). My interest in this article lies mostly with professional authority as it pertains to formal educational settings. It should be noted, however, that, in practice, classrooms in formal educational settings often involve a hybridized form of authority (Pace, 2003). This is due to the overlap of professional authority with forms of traditional authority granted teachers in their role as head of their classrooms (classroom authority), and the fact that teachers today have diminishing authority over the legal-rational aspects of teaching due to neoliberal accountability influences that have impacted on educational practices in many countries around the world (Ball, 2016). Although the political aspect of legal-rational authority is a topic of interest in the wider teaching world, I would argue that, due to the general absence of government-determined standardized testing in music teaching, professional authority is the form of greatest relevance for music teachers.

In their review of professions and professionalism in education, Bourke et al. (2013) note that professionals are often distinguished by such things as participating in an extensive preparation program, in-service professional development, “intellectual work,” and the autonomy to set up internally produced (rather than externally imposed) standards of practice. The authors also note, however, that discourses of professionalism vary according to geographic and cultural differences, and that discourses change over time. Within the context of the Global North, the status and recognition of teachers as professionals is a subject of debate (Stromquist, 2018), especially with respect the condition of autonomy (Bourke et al., 2013). In terms of “professional knowledge,” however, teachers, by virtue of their charge to exercise curricular and instructional judgment that affects the welfare of students (and by extension, society), act as professionals.

Nyberg and Farber (1986) use the term educational authority to describe the form of professional authority enacted by teachers. In attempting to distinguish the professional authority of teachers from other forms of authority, they ask, “what is special about educational authority?” (p. 6). Nyberg and Farber problematize the straightforward assumption that authority rests on competence alone: “the teacher’s qualification consists in knowing the world and being able to instruct others about it, but [their] authority rests on [their] assumption of responsibility for that world” (p. 13). To be considered “educational,” authority must recognize that the effects of pedagogical action far exceed the bounds of the subject knowledge competence of the teacher. That is, educational authority needs to recognize the larger and longer-term impacts of action. In the oft-quoted words of Arendt (2006), “anyone who refuses to assume joint responsibility for the world should not have children and must not be allowed to take part in educating them” (p. 186).

Arguably, the most impactful conceptual critique of the unintended opaque effects of educational authority is Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1977) pedagogical authority, which seeks to explain how formal education, rather than being a leveling institution in service of egalitarianism and meritocracy, instead functions to perpetuate inequality through what they describe as symbolic violence. Although aimed at any institution involved in what Bourdieu and Passeron call pedagogic action, the effects of pedagogical authority are particularly salient for purposes here. Given the inextricable relationship between music and cultural capital (Bates, 2021; Wright, 2015), the potential for symbolic violence in music teaching in formal institutions is unavoidable.

There is a close relationship between authority, responsibility, and accountability. As critics have pointed out, however, neoliberal logics have played on the polysemic nature of accountability—what Biesta (2004) points out (based on the work of Charlton) is a ‘‘slippery rhetorical term’’ —conflating its managerial financial usage with its more general meaning of “being answerable to’’ (p. 234). This neoliberal conflation has resulted in what Power (1997) cleverly labeled the ‘‘audit society,” a condition reflecting political demands for control in all aspects of social life. Although accountability discourses have manifested themselves in educational policy, particularly in countries such as the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia (Lingard & Lewis, 2016; Lingard et al., 2015), I am less concerned with neoliberal policy effects and more with the philosophical underpinnings of responsibility and accountability as they exist in non-formal and formal educational contexts that involve music and culture. To illustrate the contextually dependent nature of authority, responsibility, and accountability, I turn now to a brief examination of NGOs.

NGO accountability

As the term suggests, NGOs are organizations that form and function independently of governments. NGOs are usually non-profit, but not all non-profit organizations are NGOs. Definitional issues over what does and does not constitute an NGO are a matter or ongoing debate, as the line between an NGO and other voluntary associations, such as religious groups, “think tanks,” labor groups, professional associations, and so on is often blurry (Götz, 2019). One approach to defining NGOs focuses on an organization’s activity. NGOs usually fall into one of two broad categories: welfare provision and advocacy (Unerman & O’Dwyer, 2006).

NGOs are typically understood as beneficent; they exist to do good in the world, filling a perceived void not addressed by governmental organizations. An NGO’s “doing of good” can be relatively uncontroversial, such as the landmine campaign of the 1990s, which experienced broad support (Anderson, 2009). However, the increased profiles of NGOs around the world in the 1990s led to the growing awareness that their advocacy and policy influence could have political overtones and repercussions (Crack, 2019). This was met by what is today sometimes described as the “accountability agenda.” As Crack (2019) explains, the emergent accountability agenda focused on two basic questions: “(a) to whom should NGOs be accountable? and (b) what should they be held accountable for?” (p. 622).

In answer to the first question, scholars and researchers of NGOs describe four types of accountability: upward, downward, internal, and horizontal (Crack, 2019). Upward tends to be financial (and sometimes legal) in nature and refers in most cases to the accountability of NGOs to donors. Downward refers to the accountability of NGOs to those they purport to serve. Internal refers to the accountability of an NGO to its own organization and operation. Horizontal (or peer) refers to the accountability of an NGO to NGOs operating in the same sector. Notably absent from this list is accountability to “the public”—implying that NGOs are not typically subject to democratic processes in society.

Answers to the second question (what should NGOs be held accountable for?) depend on the type of accountability in question. I am primarily interested in the downward accountability of advocacy NGOs and how this might intersect with a larger interest in accountability as understood in formal educational settings. The underlying concern with downward accountability of NGOs lies in the legitimacy of what critics disparagingly call “self-appointed advocacy groups” (Anderson, 2009, p. 173)—a concern evident in the title of a 2003 conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute: “we’re not from the government, but we’re here to help you. The growing power of an unelected few” (see Bendell, 2006). Morally, it is often asserted, “NGOs should be accountable to values they profess and beneficiaries they serve” (AbouAssi & Trent, 2016, p. 285). However, unlike state-sponsored agencies and institutions (such as schools), which in democratic countries are ultimately accountable to elected officials, NGOs are ostensibly only accountable to the expectations of their funders and the laws of the countries in which they operate. This is especially true of international NGOs (sometimes called INGOs) which can effectively circumvent any expectation of democratic accountability (see Boli & Thomas, 1997). As Anderson (2009) eloquently puts it, “NGOs in the international arena do not have to contend with the appurtenances that would confront (and often confound) them in a national democratic society” (p. 177).

An important issue raised by NGO (and INGO) accountability is the question of mandate and authority. Given that they have not been elected “by the people” or appointed by the government, on whose authority do NGOs act? NGOs should, in theory, be morally accountable to their espoused values and stated beneficiaries, but there is typically no external oversight or process to address a situation where an NGO may be failing in its mission or doing harm rather than good. In terms of governance, NGOs are their own legislative, executive, and judicial authorities, ultimately responsible only to themselves.

Authority, responsibility, and accountability in a music-focused NGO

One of the largest music-focused international NGOs is JMI (formerly Jeunesses Musicales International). On its website, JMI describes itself as “a global network of NGOs that provide opportunities for young people and children to develop through music across all boundaries” (https://jmi.net/about). Founded in Brussels in 1945, JMI claims to be present in over 100 countries, its network of 73 member organization reaching over seven million people, aged 13–30, with the advocacy goal of “using the power of music to bridge across social, geographical, racial and economic divides and creating a platform for intercultural dialogue” (https://jmi.net/about). One of JMI’s 11 core programs is called “Ethno,” sometimes referred to as Ethno World to reflect its global reach. Beginning with its first camp in Sweden in 1990, Ethno music camps, which focus on “folk, world and traditional music,” currently operate in 40 countries spanning six continents (https://ethno.world/about).

I spent four years involved with Ethno Research (2019–2023), an independent research project funded directly by JMI (and indirectly by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies). In addition to participating with the Ethno Research team throughout the timespan of the project, my activities included attending an orientation meeting for Ethno Research (which included several conversations with key actors involved with the origins and expansion of the Ethno program), attending one Ethno camp in 2020, conducting post hoc analysis on 114 interviews, conducting and analyzing 14 interviews with Ethno organizers and artistic leaders conducted in 2021, and generating two white paper reports (Mantie & Risk, 2020; Mantie et al., 2022). All of these activities have informed this article. The quoted data shared here come from the 14 interviews with organizers and leaders. ²

Musical authority and responsibility

Although the Ethno program has expanded in recent years to include six other activities, the music camps remain the program’s core (https://ethno.world/about). At these camps (which are now referred to as “gatherings”), participants bring a piece of “traditional” music—generally understood as synonymous with national folk music—from their country of origin, which they then share with other attendees through a process described as “peer-to-peer learning” (see https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/research/international-centre-for-community-music/projects/ethno-research/). In contrast to notions of musical authenticity where tradition is defined according to experts or “culture bearers,” the music shared through peer-to-peer learning is granted a form of authentic legitimacy by virtue of citizenship or nationality. Attendees function as de facto authorities (or culture bearers), regardless of their expertise. As one camp organizer pointed out, one claims national or cultural authority at camps by virtue of attendance, not qualification: “ultimately, you represent your country, although nobody from your country nominated you as the official representative. You are the ambassador for being there.”

Interestingly, another organizer explained how this aspect of representative authority is understood as bringing with it a major responsibility.

One realizes how important it is to be the representative of one’s own culture, like that responsibility one has to represent it with pride. When one goes to an Ethno overseas, one is Chile. Everything people see and know about you will be what they will remember about your country. So I feel there is an important commitment. The same with people that come to Chile: everything they see here is going to become their mental image of Chile.

The expectations of participants do not come with an expectation of expertise or authenticity, right versus wrong.

There is no single way to represent your country. Unlike what happens in a folkloric meeting, where you have to deliver a rapa nui song, one from the north, one from the south, a cueca, and I don’t know what, in an Ethno you deliver whatever you want to deliver at that moment, what you feel it is the most appropriate for the context, period.

Metaphors of learning

As previously discussed, authority is contextual. It is dependent upon shared motivations and understandings of relationships. When students enroll in a university program, they arrive with conditioned expectations of roles and power dynamics. Although Ethno camps do have musical facilitators (known as “artistic leaders” or “artistic mentors”) who help structure and guide individual sessions, a strong non-hierarchical ethos tends to prevail among attendees. The shared motivations and understandings of the relationship are of intercultural exchange and intercultural music exchange. Attendees seek out Ethno camps for various reasons, one of which is professional development in music (Higgins & Gibson, 2024). One organizer with considerable experience with the Ethno program suggested that about 25% of Ethno is about fostering the professional world of folk and traditional musics. Even though the majority attend without professional aspirations in music, all arrive with expectations of learning—understood as learning new and diverse musical repertoire its cultural context.

Interviewees used multiple metaphors to explain what might appear to some as a superficial approach to learning so many different musical styles in such a short period of time. One artistic leader with more than 10 years of Ethno experience invoked the metaphor of museum:

“it’s literally like going into a museum and looking at different things and I walk out. The travel through the museum is just like two hours or maybe half a day or an entire day but you get different perspectives of things.”

They went on to point out the indeterminacy of the learning process at Ethno:

You never know what sort of an experience you’re going to get out of Ethno. The only thing you know that you will go, you will have this Ethno experience and then you will take something back with you. It’s almost like going for a carnival or a ride. There is a limitation of how much you can teach and how much you can preserve [. . .]. It’s important to let go of perfection [. . .]. The only intent here is to introduce you to something.

Other metaphors used by interviewees included branches of a tree and wine tasting. The most popular one was that of a window, where attending an Ethno camp was thought of as a window onto various musical-cultural practices that served to whet the appetite for more immersive learning at a later date. One artistic leader and organizer, for example, called Ethno “a shopping street.” Their point was that Ethno was the equivalent of strolling by the windows and looking in—the goal of which was to motivate attendees to “open the door” to “meet this really old tradition keeper [that] teaches you the real stuff.”

Discussion

I have shared a few interview responses from those involved with JMI’s Ethno World music camps to highlight issues of accountability in music learning and teaching. Unlike teaching that occurs in formal education, which typically has implicit or explicit mechanisms of educational accountability, Ethno World, as a program overseen by an international NGO, operates as it wishes, seemingly accountable only to its funders. There are no clear mechanisms to safeguard against what in formal settings might constitute educational malpractice. To whom does JMI answer (other than the “marketplace”) when things go wrong? What if, instead of “doing good,” Ethno camps actually promote harmful stereotypes and misrepresentations of cultures? In the absence of any kind of expertise-based oversight, is nationality sufficient grounds for granting authoritative status in peer-to-peer learning?

As Schippers (2024, pp. 176–177) has pointed out, peer-to-peer learning is not unique to JMI’s Ethno World program. Nevertheless, Ethno World touts its “non-formal” approach as a special way of learning, one “characterised by respect, generosity and openness” (https://ethno.world/about/). Despite such grand claims, the activities of Ethno World can be viewed as problematic from an ethical perspective that values democratic principles of mandate and accountability with respect to education. The program is run by the “unelected few” whose authority is self-proclaimed. My analysis of Ethno World, however, has afforded an opportunity to reflect more deeply on the wider “moral ecology” of multicultural music learning and teaching. When placed in relief against multicultural practices in formal education, the activities of JMI’s Ethno program raise issues of authenticity, authority, and accountability that can ultimately help to inform the field of music education.

Pace and Hemmings (2007) suggest that challenges related to diversity are “by far the most perplexing” for educators (p. 22). In music education, the challenges of diversity include both the normative aspects of content selection and the competence aspects that are a necessary part of any endeavor predicated upon the premise of “getting it right.” A practical problem in music teaching is that developing the necessary competence in some musical traditions can take years of dedicated study, raising questions about the limits of multicultural music education. As Morton (2001) concludes about the challenge of music teachers becoming acceptably fluent in musical traditions beyond our own: “can we become insiders? Realistically: Probably not” (p. 39).

One of the arguments in this article is that music education has given insufficient attention to the complicated interrelationship between authenticity, authority, and accountability. The findings of Ethno Research suggest that part of the reason attendees at Ethno camps do not come away naively believing that they are receiving “authentic” versions of musical cultures is because their learning is refracted through the lens of their own experience in the peer-to-peer teaching exchange. Every individual has an understanding of the limits of their own cultural authority. No one strives to uphold a model-copy of authenticity. An attendee from Chile accepts the responsibility of representation but knows that their claims to authenticity in Ethno camps are based on nationality, not expertise per se—a condition Risk and Manson-Curry (2024) have described as “personal authenticity”. Attendees do not attempt to “get it right” beyond their efforts to be faithful to themselves in the musical sharing process. Individuals are not held accountable to an objective standard of authenticity because they do not arrive with the status of experts; everyone in the room (other than the artistic mentors, who have an elevated status) arrives knowing that they are like everyone else: someone with lived musical experiences colored by their own historicocultural, geopolitical location.

By virtue of their professional status, music teachers in formal contexts face the expectation of expertise (authority) and, by extension, accountability. The discourse of the “highly qualified teacher” at the compulsory schooling level (e.g., Austin & Miksza, 2012; Burnard, 2016; Prichard & Caithaml, 2024) underscores this phenomenon. Music teaching in the absence of qualifications is regarded in formal educational contexts as irresponsible: as amateur, negligent, or a form of malpractice. Rancière’s (1991) ignorant schoolmaster cannot exist in the neoliberal world of educational accountability. One of the problems with multicultural music education in formal instruction is thus the impossible demand that music teachers be regarded as cultural content authorities.

Following Peters, Nyberg and Farber (1986) describe teaching as a “policy of initiation.” This initiation is “undertaken on the principle of authority.” They remind us, however, that initiation can “sound disquietingly similar to what we ordinarily mean by indoctrination” (p. 9). The difference between initiation and indoctrination, Nyberg and Farber argue, lies in how authority is enacted and perceived. When learning and teaching takes place in the absence of criticality that “questions the basis in reason of every claim to authority” (p. 9), initiation can indeed be indistinguishable from indoctrination, opening the door to harmful stereotyping, misappropriation, and symbolic violence. When Nyberg and Farber write that teachers “have a special obligation to teach about authority while they act as authorities in supervising education” (p. 12), they underscore the need for teachers to be transparent about the sources of knowledge and understanding that form the basis of their clams to expertise and authority. In so doing, learners come to understand that “getting it right” is a contingent, not absolute or universal matter.

The peer-to-peer learning at Ethno World camps can be viewed as a form of what Abril and Kelly-McHale (2016) call a “multidirectional learning environment”. It is probably unrealistic to think that school music teachers could or should directly emulate how Ethno World approaches intercultural music learning because formal education demands that teachers not only show that learning has occurred (i.e., document “getting it right”), but structure learning in ways that demonstrate development over time. School music teachers are held accountable in ways that Ethno World is not. I would argue, however, that by embracing the spirit of Ethno World camps, music teachers could help learners problematize what it means to function as an epistemic agent. This could be accomplished, in part, by teachers being more forthcoming to students about their own source(s) of authority during the pedagogical encounter, expressing greater openness to the lived musical experiences of their students, and actively resisting assumptions and expectations that “highly qualified” implies competence in musical traditions beyond one’s own.

As Biesta (2004) has argued, neoliberal logics in education play on the polysemy of accountability. By premising teaching on original and copy, where success is determined by authenticity in the sense of fidelity to the original, music teachers who desire to include musical traditions beyond their own backgrounds will invariably be deemed inadequate for failing to be knowledgeable enough. It is not realistic for music teachers to be sufficiently and comprehensively fluent in more than a few musical traditions. Ethno World metaphors of museum, carnival, or shopping street may be problematic to the extent they invoke a consumerist view of multicultural education; but at the same time, the peer-to-peer conditions of sharing “traditional” music based solely on the authority of nationality in Ethno camps helps to explicitly foreground and challenge what it means to be an insider. If music educators could teach about authority while acting as authorities, they could begin to move away from the original-copy paradigm that inevitably positions them as inadequate.